TIFF Files: Fest Dibs, Good for Squibs?

A different rhythm can be felt at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival as everyone adjusts to their personal timetables to the scheduling changes brought about by the festival’s new edict that requires a film to make its official debut – or at least its North American debut – at TIFF.

More and more in recent years, TIFF organizers have seen their bragging rights to the debuts of future Oscar- and other award-winners co-opted by two major film festivals – Venice and Telluride – which take place in the days leading up to Toronto. It’s especially perplexing due to Telluride’s tradition of not announcing its lineup until the start of the festival. The fest’s intimate fanbase is so loyal, and its programming so stellar, that this "trust us” policy is part and parcel with the festival’s allure. But it seems like Telluride’s scooping last year of 12 Years a Slave and Gravity proved too much to bear. So, for their 2014 edition, TIFF announced that any film which debuted elsewhere would not receive one of the highly valued gala premieres on the fest’s opening weekend, although the film could still get a berth later in the week.

No doubt, this all seems very “inside baseball” to the general observer, but for the citizens of Movieland (as A.O. Scott labeled the professional film-fest attendees in “Film Festivals Scramble for First Dibs,” an astute and well-delineated article about the competition among the fests for bragging rights), this has had a significant effect. The citizens of Movieland – whom he defines as “a fractious, mobile and multifarious population that includes publicists and producers, celebrity profilers and the celebrities they profile, bloggers, soothsayers and critics of every temperament and medium” – travel the festival circuit throughout the year, and these early fall gatherings have become the standard launching pads for building Oscar buzz and other awards notice.

For the citizens of Movieland, this contributed to a feeling of opening-weekend overload, since almost everything playing during TIFF’s opening days was new to the festival circuit. These pros had already caught buzzy films like Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, starring Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, and Mark Ruffalo at Telluride (or at Cannes back in May). Or they saw A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence at Venice, where it was announced during the opening days of TIFF that this Swedish film (which I wrote about in my last TIFF post) won Venice’s Golden Lion. Since the citizens of Movieland (who had already caught these films and many others at previous fests) tend to bug out soon after TIFF’s opening weekend, this scheduling created lots of conflicts and frustrations (although I have only anecdotal evidence to back this up). However, for journalists and critics like me, this new scheduling policy has had a liberating effect. If this is the only early-fall fest you’re attending, and if you plan to stay for longer than the weekend, having the big, splashy films spaced out throughout the week reduces the anxiety and constant decision-making (because no matter how spaced-out the program, there is always the constant pressure to choose one screening over another when more than 300 films are on the menu). As a writer who hasn’t been to Venice or Telluride, TIFF’s new policy suits me just fine.

More about the films tomorrow, I promise.

A correction has been made to this story since original publication.